Tag Archives: System Builders

We’re in with our second-last episode of the System Builders guide for June (delayed slightly thanks to life issues) and we’re once again looking at the mid-range market, where we find our sweet-spot build. Prices are slowly but surely coming down or stabilising and in a few areas they are downright dropping like a stone. If you’re building up your first rig and you have around R16,500 to burn, you might even have a small surprise waiting for you. Hop on in and start drooling!

I regularly get questions from readers, friends and family about when exactly they should upgrade their computers and I can never give them a straight answer. Recently I received a letter from a reader and I’ll address it today, as well as addressing the same questions that everyone else asks as well.

Hello and welcome, gamers, to the bi-monthly System Builder’s guide, this time for the month of June. Things are still a bit messy following E3 2014 and many of the NAG staff and contributors are still digesting all the little things that we’ve seen. However, one thing is patently clear from the recent expo – PC gamers will get most of the multi-platform titles and there are several PC-only games that look incredible as well (Civilisation: Beyond Earth, anyone?). Console exclusives may be very tempting, but PC gaming offers a much cheaper spend over time if you’re patient and wait for those flash sales which chop down the prices of new games really quickly. So if you’re looking for a new build this month or are stepping in for the first time, there’s something for everyone.

In this, our last System Builder’s Guide of the month, we take a look at some pants-sweatingly expensive hardware that most of us could only dream of owning. This time, however, there’s a bit of a twist at the end and it’s all thanks to Intel’s launch of the Haswell-E and LGA2011-3 platform later this year. It throws a spanner in the works when considering my highest-value recommendation and it also makes things a bit uncertain for buyers today eyeing out a X79 system. If you’re shopping anywhere at this level, be sure to check out this week’s episode of the guide to know more about why I think you should wait if you have R30,000 burning a hole in your pocket.

We’re back with another System Builders guide and this time we’re ducking into the mid-range segment, covering builds between R11,500 and R16,500. Historically this segment of the guide is the least exciting because the hardware doesn’t vary too much. Occasionally there’s a processor change here, a SSD there and a chipset or board change to support new features but overall, the mid-range market is pretty boring. On the GPU side there’s also a performance gap that makes it difficult to spend more than R3000 on a GPU, especially if you’re playing at 1080p. If you want to see how I’ll address that, follow me after the jump!

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